The effect of slip surfaces on the laminar–turbulent separatrix of plane Poiseuille flow is studied by direct numerical simulation. In laminar flows, the inclusion of the slip surfaces results in a drag reduction of over 10 %, which is in good agreement with previous studies and the theory of laminar slip flows. Turbulence lifetimes, the likelihood that turbulence is sustained, is investigated for transitional flows with various slip lengths. We show that slip surfaces decrease the likelihood of sustained turbulence compared to the no-slip case, and the likelihood is further decreased as slip length is increased. A more deterministic analysis of the effects of slip surfaces on a transition to turbulence is performed by using nonlinear travelling-wave solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations, also known as exact coherent solutions. Two solution families, dubbed P3 and P4, are used since their lower-branch solutions are embedded on the boundary of the basin of attraction of laminar and turbulent flows (Park & Graham, J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 782, 2015, pp. 430–454). Additionally, they exhibit distinct flow structures – the P3 and P4 are denoted as core mode and critical-layer mode, respectively. Distinct effects of slip surfaces on the solutions are observed by the skin-friction evolution, linear growth rate and phase-space projection of transitional trajectories. The slip surface appears to modify the transition dynamics very little for the core mode, but quite considerably for the critical-layer mode. Most importantly, the slip surface promotes different transition dynamics – an early and bypass-like transition for the core mode and a delayed and H- or K-type-like transition for the critical-layer mode. We explain these distinct transition dynamics based on spatio-temporal and quadrant analyses. It is found that slip surfaces promote the prevalence of strong wall-toward motions (sweep-like events) near vortex cores close to the channel centre, inducing an early transition, while long sustained ejection events are present in the region of the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ -shaped vortex cores close to the critical layer, resulting in a delayed transition. This should motivate flow control strategies to fully exploit these distinct transition dynamics for transition to turbulence.
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Boundary Conditions and Polymeric Drag Reduction for the Navier–Stokes Equations
Reducing wall drag in turbulent pipe and channel flows is an issue of great practical importance. In engineering applications, end-functionalized polymer chains are often employed as agents to reduce drag. These are polymers which are floating in the solvent and attach (either by adsorption or through irreversible chemical binding) at one of their chain ends to the substrate (wall). We propose a PDE model to study this setup in the simple setting where the solvent is a viscous incompressible Navier–Stokes fluid occupying the bulk of a smooth domain Ω⊂ℝ𝑑, and the wall-grafted polymer is in the so-called mushroom regime (inter-polymer spacing on the order of the typical polymer length). The microscopic description of the polymer enters into the macroscopic description of the fluid motion through a dynamical boundary condition on the wall-tangential stress of the fluid, something akin to (but distinct from) a history-dependent slip-length. We establish the global well-posedness of strong solutions in two-spatial dimensions and prove that the inviscid limit to the strong Euler solution holds with a rate. Moreover, the wall-friction factor ⟨𝑓⟩ and the global energy dissipation ⟨𝜀⟩ vanish inversely proportional to the Reynolds number 𝐑𝐞. This scaling corresponds to Poiseuille’s law for the friction factor ⟨𝑓⟩∼1/𝐑𝐞 for laminar flow and thereby quantifies drag reduction in our setting. These results are in stark contrast to those available for physical boundaries without polymer additives modeled by, for example, no-slip conditions, where no such results are generally known even in two-dimensions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1703997
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10271659
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis
- ISSN:
- 0003-9527
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s00205-021-01689-6
